My Online Store Has Launched!

I bear great tidings! The time has finally come! After working on this project for exactly one year, I have launched my online store.

It’s finally live. Is it done? Of course not, far from it. The first “batch” of products is done. Level 1 of my curriculum and big plan, so to speak.

But it’s live now, for real. It has a proper domain name that anyone in the world can visit. Everything has nice images, and descriptions, and categories, and I dare say I’ve done a lot of good work already. You can add products to your cart and buy them using numerous payment methods.

Why?

Your first question is probably: Why? Why create this online store?

Because I need money to survive! I’ve been giving away everything for free (or nearly so) for years, and surprisingly, this left me without income. I’m still working on my old university laptop that can barely do anything anymore, I’m still living in a place without heating, and that simply needs to change. And for that I need some income.

I’ve always had this plan in the back of my mind, to be honest. But ten years ago, this obviously seemed too far away. I barely had any work with my name on it. Just a book and two tiny video games, if I remember correctly. I barely had the skills to make any part of such an ambitious project.

So I worked for ten years to make that stuff and get those skills. And now was the moment where “need money” and “can make it” intersected, and this massive online store was born.

What do you sell?

You second question is probably: What do you sell? Or: Why would I be interested, Tiamo?

In general, the store sells all my creative work. I’ve created a lot, spanning many different creative fields, and I’ve finally brought it all together in one place. My books aren’t just on Amazon anymore—you can also buy them here. My games aren’t just on random game websites anymore—you can also buy them here. I have full control over them now, they are grouped nicely on the same website, and I can sell them for less (e.g. because Amazon doesn’t take a big cut).

More specifically, though, the store is meant to show how much better education could be. Our systems of education have been hell for me ever since I first set foot in a school. I’ve written countless articles, and even a non-fiction book, about why the system is so terrible and how it could be improved massively. I have literally been researching how to learn and educate more efficiently ever since I was a little boy.

But talking and researching is just the first step—now it was time to actually show it!

The store is built around a curriculum. I’ve started at the very beginning, with basics like “shapes”, “colors” and “phonics”. I’ve created regular teaching resources for it that one could use in a classroom or when homeschooling. That’s just the first category, and the one I needed to make to (hopefully) get people to find the store and take it seriously. But once I’ve created such “educational resources” for a topic, I advanced into my other categories which contain quizzes, and puzzles, and games. I show how you can teach, practice and explore anything much better—while having much more fun—through a game or similar experience.

As such, to answer the question, why would you be interested?

• If you’re a teacher or parent looking for a way to explain and explore a topic. No matter what you’re looking for, no matter what kind of “learner” your kid is, I have you covered. Every topic receives traditional “textbooks”, but also puzzles, games, etcetera.
• If you’re simply looking for a fun activity or way to spend time together. I’ve focused a lot on “pub quizzes”, for example. Even created the most powerful system for it that exists (as far as I can tell). Any group, any family, will enjoy a fun quiz night using one of those products.
• If you enjoy any of my work, you can now find it all (including source files and extras!) in one safe, trusted store owned by me. It ensures most of your money actually ends up with me. It ensures I don’t need to ruin your experience just to fit into the mold of some other big company (… like Amazon).

In all of this, the focus is very much on kids and family. I’ve always been focused on that, you can even see it in my writing style and art style, but now it’s a core tenet of the store to give first priority to that.

What makes you different?

Your third question, maybe, is why I choose to go down this path and why I think it will be a viable source of income. It’s basically the question I’ve asked myself all year: What makes me different from the other stores? What will make this a SUCCESS?

Firstly, I really can’t overstate how important education is to me. School absolutely ruined me physically and mentally. Perhaps because I have a natural instinct for learning, exploring, and teaching. I was born with a brain that adores learning new skills and information, soaking it all up, getting bored when things get too easy. And—like many of my peers—that was basically beaten out of me by our systems of education, by design. I have a strong urge to improve the system for all the next generations and to show how to do it.

Besides that, I’ve slowly found my answers over the past year of making this thing. The answer to why I actually feel that this will be a success and am willing to put my last bit of money into it (to actually host and run the store, of course).

• All my experience and skill turned the store into a gorgeous website, that’s also really fast/small and easy to work with. It’s the “best website” of all the ones I’ve made. It feels way more professional and future-proof than the Pandaqi website I made 10 years ago, at least.
• Similarly, my experience making past products really taught me what works and what doesn’t. What is “too hard” for people to understand, and what is “an interesting new idea”. Over the years, I’ve invented new genres and built frameworks for making those things, and it all seems to come together into really greate products now. I certainly won’t say it’s “easy” to make any of it. But there aren’t massive hiccups along the way, and when it’s done, I see something that is absolutely “sellable”.
• I purposely designed this store for me (and my body/brain). The different categories allow me to work on something different every 1 or 2 weeks. I’ve never been as productive as this past year, precisely because I could switch to something else at just the right time to keep my brain engaged. At the same time, I’ve taken more breaks than in the 15 year before that.
• Similarly, my brain wants things to have a purpose. By attaching ideas to educational topics, they automatically get a clear purpose and place in the “curriculum”. It’s allowed me to pick my ideas with much more certainty, and have a clear direction/motivation when executing them. In the past, if I said I “made games”, people would huff and ask when I’d get a real job. When I say I make “educational games”, they are suddenly interested and tell me I’m doing good work. Typical ;)
• Almost every day, I read a story in the paper (or hear a story from someone) about how education is changing. How more and more people are dropping out, looking at radically different ways to do it, starting their own schools, etcetera. People have never been as critical of our system of education as today, and there’s a large number of people willing to look somewhere else and try new things. The products I make were created exactly for that market!
  • Or, in other words, there is a big proven market for educational(-adjacent) work. There are quite some solid competitors with lots of clients in this market, proving its sustainability. At the same time …
• My competitors in this space are going off in a completely different direction. They are “strengthening” the system. I am (mostly) overthrowing it. They focus on adhering to all the exact standards. I focus on making things as good and effective as possible, based on science and all my experience.
  • You can compare a random “teaching resource” from a website like e.g. Twinkl with one of mine, and I hope you agree that mine looks far better and less like an insult to children’s intelligence.
  • My competitors include a basic PDF with domino tiles and call it a “fun educational game”, and that’s as far as they go. I create loads of really good games that actually explore topics and skills in different ways, and give them a front row seat in the huge Games category. Basic domino tiles are more a “small activity” and just something I add as one small piece to larger products. I’d laugh at myself if I sold basic domino tiles as some amazing experience for 10 dollars.

I hope this gives an idea of why I made the store, what it’s supposed to do, and why I think this was my best path towards an income and future.

What does it take to run this store?

Now might be the time to ask the opposite question: is this actually sustainable? How does the store work and how long can I keep it running even if nobody buys anything?

As always, I’ll be completely transparent here. Will that bite me in the ass at some point? Maybe. Anyway.

Because I lack money, the current online store setup is absolutely as cheap and efficient as possible.

• I’ve built the entire thing myself. So no subscriptions to other services, no costs made, nothing. This also means it’s as small and efficient as possible, as I only make what’s needed and nothing more.
• I use free hosting at CloudFlare Pages. I can stay easily within their limits. (Hosting = the thing that keeps the website online and accessible anywhere in the world.)
• I pay ~10 dollars/year for the domain at CloudFlare. (Domain name = the thing you type in your browser address bar to visit websites, usually ending in .com)
• I pay 20 dollars a month for the online store environment and payment integration. (If I earn more than 1000, they switch to taking 2% of my profit. That 20 dollars is basically a “lower limit”.)
  • Some more “middle men” in the complex chain of digital payment processing take their own cuts too. But we’re talking about a few cents here and there, a few percentages here and there, and that’s negligible unless you earn hundreds of thousands a month.

As such, the minimum cost for keeping this store running is ~21 dollars a month.

There are some footnotes here, though. They’re not relevant at launch, really, but I still want to mention them.

• I pay a flexible fee for email. Until the store becomes quite busy, this will just be 0. (Having a dedicated email address means a lot for your credibility, both to consumers and e.g. Google. Additionally, it’s necessary when you sell as many digital goods as I do, as those must be sent from “trusted, verified emails” if you don’t want them all to end in the old spam bucket. Or, worse, not be received at all.)
  • Honestly, this part is a mess right now. Email is so important … yet the only providers are very sketchy websites in America with no support and a 1.5/5 average star rating by customers. It took me quite some work to find something I can actually half-trust here and that won’t surprise me with sudden fees or whatever.
• I pay a flexible fee for merchandise integration. Whenever you buy something, it has to run some scripts and send some signals to place the right order at the printer/merchandise platform. Until the store becomes quite busy, this will also just be 0. (I’ll be well within the limits of the first/free tier.)

With this projected cost, I can run the online store for 2 years without selling anything. I think that’s a solid runway. If I can’t at least sell a few things once in a while, after 2 years of working really hard on the store, then I’ll just need to accept it won’t work and switch to something else. But even selling 5 things a month would already make the enterprise turn a profit, and that should be very achievable.

As for the specifics on the store’s content, that’s a matter far too involved for this article. The summary is that I made updating the store as “simple” as creating new folders and text files for new products, typing their description and other details inside (and nothing else), and whenever I click a big button it pushes out the latest changes and rebuilds the store. This usually means the store refreshes automatically once a week, adding the 3 or 4 things I made that week.

I made this as flexible and simple as possible on purpose. Because this is the thing I’ve been doing (and will be doing) day in day out, so any friction here would mean a LOT of built-up irritation and wasted time.

So, what now?

Good question.

For the most part, the answer is simple and boring. I continue working on the store.

• The store is broken into “Levels” (roughly corresponding with age ranges/grades), and I started, as you should, at the beginning.
• The “core” of Level 1 is done. But there’s still that other 50% of products that I deemed “great, but not essential” and will be made this year.
• I will alternate that work with Level 2 stuff. Because Level 2 is when I’ll actually teach counting and reading, and that opens up basically everything else that I might want to do. (It’s been very tough this past year to make everything “textless” and “numberless” for the youngest kids.)
• But to prevent falling into an educational death spiral, and hopefully attract a larger audience, I alternate that work with “themed” work. For example, the past few weeks I’ve made “Christmas products”, not tied to any school topic or whatever. Just nice games to play with the family, for example.

Judging from this past year, I can get the “core” of a Level done in a year. It will take 2 years to “complete” a Level. Themed products just take a week here and there, e.g. I’ll make some Halloween game in the week before Halloween then switch back to usual work.

The bigger question mark is in terms of marketing and (financial) success. I’ve done the “bare minimum” of marketing.

• I’ve written this article, of course, but that probably won’t be read or found by many. I’m doing that to get my thoughts out and to explain stuff for whomever is interested!
• No, better, I’ve “integrated” the store and links to it in all my other major websites. I’ve completely reworked my biggest and most popular website (Pandaqi) to lead people from there to the store.
• It’s my habit now to always add nice and clear images, marketing copy, and tagging/labels to everything. So the whole store and all products on it are as findable and searchable as possible, and hopefully as attractive as possible. None of it is buried under anything, or just flat text without images, or vaguely named.
• I’ve tried to slap prices on things that are not too low ( = I don’t actually earn an income) nor too high ( = nobody buys it because of that). And, as stated, kept my costs absolutely as low as possible.
• I’ve informed the usual places (e.g. Google) about the website’s existence and that I want to be listed.

Is this enough? Will it work at all? I don’t know. I have no clue how this will go. I could surely do more, such as post announcements in relevant subreddits or give away free products in teacher forums.

But then again, I’m already investing a lot of time into marketing and not actually making new products. (Creating marketing images for example—a gallery with multiple clear and sensible pictures of the final product—is way more work than anyone would want it to be.) At least for this first year, I wanted to lean more towards creating than marketing what I’ve created.

And now the final question: what about all my other projects? I hate hate hate to say it, but I had to put things like The Saga of Life on hold. I need money. That thing was not making me (enough) money, because it was never intended to do so. Until I have an income, all those big free side projects will basically be on hold.

It’s not all bad, though. I’ve been able to bring a lot of work “into the fold”. Perhaps with some changes or extra work, a lot of old projects found a good spot in the web shop. Looking back at my work with fresh (“educational”) eyes, I could see my mistakes and pivot them to something more practical and, I hate to say it, sellable. It’s extremely silly how people’s perception changes drastically when you insert even a hint of educational value, but that’s how it is.

For now, that online store will be 99% of my work. A lot of good work has been done. A lot more is still to be done. This article hopefully explained the why, the how, and the future.

By the end of this year (2026), I hope to earn enough to never fear running at a loss. The important part here is not the total peak profit, but the consistency or reliability of that income. And I hope to have gotten a solid start with Level 2, as that’s where my ideas and concepts will actually start to shine, I believe.

This was my announcement, check out the online store if you want, until next time,

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